U.S. team and Gotham FC defender Kelley O'Hara announced Thursday that she is retiring from soccer at the end of the National Women's Soccer League season.
O'Hara, 35, is a two-time Women's World Cup winner, an Olympic gold medalist and a two-time National Women's Soccer League title winner.
She made her announcement on the Just Women's Sports platform, where she has hosted a popular players' podcast.
“I’ve been playing soccer since I was 4 years old, and it’s been an absolute joy," she said. “But as they say, ‘Don’t cry because it’s over. Smile because it happened.’ And I know there will be a lot of tears by me and probably some of y’all, but I hope there are more smiles.”
O'Hara, who was a free-agent signing by Gotham in 2023, has played in the NWSL for 11 seasons. Gotham won the NWSL title last season. Before that, she played for the Washington Spirit, which won the league championship in 2021.
In 160 appearances with the national team, O'Hara has played in four total World Cups and three Olympics. She is one of just four U.S. players to be selected for four World Cup squads.
At the 2015 World Cup, she came off the bench to score in the 84th minute, sealing a 2-0 semifinal victory over Germany. The United States went on to win the tournament with a 5-2 win over Japan.
She won a gold medal in the London Olympics and a bronze in the Tokyo Games.
“It has been one of the greatest joys to represent my country and to wear the U.S. Soccer crest,” O’Hara said in a U.S. Soccer statement. “As I close this chapter of my life, I am filled with gratitude. Looking back on my career I am so thankful for all the things I was able to accomplish but most importantly the people I was able to accomplish them with.”
Recently dogged by injuries, O'Hara's last match with the national team came at the World Cup last summer.
A Georgia native, O'Hara played at Stanford and won the 2009 MAC Hermann Trophy as the top college player her senior season.
AP soccer: https://apnews.com/hub/soccer
FILE - United States' Kelley O'Hara, left, and Vietnam's Hai Yen Pham vie for the ball during the Women's World Cup Group E soccer match at Eden Park in Auckland, New Zealand, July 22, 2023. United States national team and NJ/NT Gotham FC player O'Hara announced Thursday, May 2, 2024, that she is retiring from soccer at the end of the National Women's Soccer League season. (AP Photo/Andrew Cornaga, File)
FILE - NJ/NY Gotham FC defender Kelley O'Hara looks on during an NWSL soccer match against the Portland Thorns FC, March 24, 2024, in Portland, Ore. United States national team and Gotham player O'Hara announced Thursday, May 2, 2024, that she is retiring from soccer at the end of the National Women's Soccer League season. (AP Photo/Amanda Loman, File)
CAPE TOWN, South Africa (AP) — South Africa's election will determine how weary the country has become of the ruling African National Congress party that has been in power since the end of the apartheid system of white minority rule 30 years ago.
President Cyril Ramaphosa and the ANC are struggling to keep their parliamentary majority and opinion polls predict that the party will likely receive less than 50% of the national vote for the first time in the May 29 election.
That doesn't mean that the beleaguered ANC will be out of power in Africa's most advanced economy.
Even as the famous organization once led by Nelson Mandela has seen a decline in its popularity, no one has risen to a position to replace it. Instead, South Africans who have turned away from the ANC have gone looking for answers among an array of opposition parties.
So, the ANC is still expected to gain the largest share of votes. But without an outright majority, it would need to form a coalition to stay in government and keep Ramaphosa for a second and final term as president. For a key country on the African continent, that might bring new complications, given some recent coalitions at local level have been spectacular failures.
While most South Africans appear ready to register their disgruntlement with the ANC in a defining moment, a coalition government may not easily solve the country's big problems, which include the world’s highest levels of unemployment and inequality.
South Africans don't vote directly for their president, but rather decide the makeup of Parliament, which is called the National Assembly. They do that by choosing parties and those parties get seats in Parliament according to their share of the national vote. The 400-member National Assembly then elects the president, meaning whichever party has a majority chooses the head of state.
That has always been the ANC since the first all-race elections in 1994, but this time it may need to strike agreements with other parties to get the required 201 votes from lawmakers to reelect the 71-year-old Ramaphosa and form a government.
The election effectively starts on Friday and Saturday, when South African citizens living overseas vote in embassies and foreign missions. The main election will be held on May 29 across all nine provinces. It will decide the makeup of both the national and provincial legislatures.
Just over 27 million of the population of 62 million are registered to vote in what is only the country's seventh fully democratic national election since apartheid was dismantled.
There are 70 political parties registered for the vote, the most ever, and independent candidates will be allowed to stand for the first time.
The ANC's fate is the headline story: Ramaphosa is the party's leader and the face of its campaign. The main opposition is the centrist Democratic Alliance, or DA. It has entered into an agreement with some smaller parties in the hope that their combined vote might force the ANC out of government completely. Polls indicate they are some way off that mark.
The far-left Economic Freedom Fighters, or EFF, is the third biggest party and led by Julius Malema, a fiery former ANC youth leader.
The DA won around 20% in the last national election and the EFF 10% to the ANC's 57.5%. Neither opposition party appears to have significantly increased in popularity.
That's largely because of the dozens of other parties, many of them new, that have captured small shares. While 80% of South Africa’s population is Black, it is a multi-racial, multi-cultural society, with five defined racial groups, many ethnicities and 12 official languages. An equally diverse political picture is beginning to appear.
Of the new parties, uMkhonto weSizwe (which means Spear of the Nation) has gained the most attention because it is led by former South African President Jacob Zuma, who has turned his back on the ANC he once led in a bitter battle with Ramaphosa, the man who replaced him.
Unemployment and poverty stand out as the most pressing issues for the majority of people. While South Africa is regarded as Africa's most advanced country, its contradictions are stark. It also has an unemployment rate of 32% — the highest in the world — and more than half of South Africans are living in poverty, according to the World Bank.
That has driven most of the discontent as millions of the poor Black majority feel the ANC has not improved their lives sufficiently three decades after apartheid, which brutally oppressed Black people in favor of the white minority.
Other prominent election issues that are seen as pushing voters away from the ANC are the high rate of violent crime, multiple government corruption scandals over the years, the failure of some basic government services and a crisis within the state-owned electricity supplier that has led to nationwide blackouts at regular intervals to conserve power. The blackouts have eased ahead of the election but they angered people and further damaged a struggling economy.
This story has been corrected to show the ANC won 57.5% of the vote in the last national election, not 62%.
AP Africa news: https://apnews.com/hub/africa
FILE - Cars travel on a normally well-lit section of a freeway during a power outage in Johannesburg on Sept. 21, 2022. Power shortages, unemployment and poverty stand out as the most pressing issues as the country heads to a general election May 29, 2024. (AP Photo/Denis Farrell, File)
File — Residents of the township of Soweto, Johannesburg, South Africa, queue for water Saturday, March 16, 2024. Unemployment and poverty stand out as the most pressing issues for the majority of people in the country as the country heads to a general election May 29, 2024. (AP Photo/Jerome Delay, File)
File — A young girl carrying an empty water bottle through a flooded street caused by an overflowing water reservoir in Hammanskraal, Pretoria, South Africa, Friday, May 26, 2023 during a cholera outbreak. Unemployment and poverty stand out as the most pressing issues for the majority of people in the country as the country heads to a general election May 29, 2024. (AP Photo/Themba Hadebe,File)
An array of election posters from various political parties are displayed on poles in Pretoria, South Africa, Thursday, May 16, 2024. (AP Photo/Themba Hadebe)
An array of election posters from various political parties are displayed on poles in Pretoria, South Africa, Thursday, May 16, 2024. (AP Photo/Themba Hadebe)
An array of election posters from various political parties are displayed on poles in Pretoria, South Africa, Thursday, May 16, 2024. (AP Photo/Themba Hadebe)
